(no subject)
I know that a few hundred years ago science wasn't what it is today, but there was a quote in microbiology earlier that can't fail to make you laugh:
If you press a piece of underwear soiled with sweat together with some wheat in an open mouthed jar, after about 21 days the odor changes and the ferment, coming out of the underwear and penetrating through the husks of wheat, changes the wheat into mice. But what is more remarkable is that mice of both sexes emerge, and these mice successfully reproduce with mice born naturally from parents...But what it is more remarkable is that the mice which come out of the wheat and underwear are not small mice, not even miniature adults or aborted mice, but adult mice emerge.
J.B van Helmont (1577-1644)
Oh the hilarity.
If you press a piece of underwear soiled with sweat together with some wheat in an open mouthed jar, after about 21 days the odor changes and the ferment, coming out of the underwear and penetrating through the husks of wheat, changes the wheat into mice. But what is more remarkable is that mice of both sexes emerge, and these mice successfully reproduce with mice born naturally from parents...But what it is more remarkable is that the mice which come out of the wheat and underwear are not small mice, not even miniature adults or aborted mice, but adult mice emerge.
J.B van Helmont (1577-1644)
Oh the hilarity.